Hidden From Sight
by AudreytheAwkward
Summary: I am convinced. This life has been artificially manufacture for Sam and I. It is not real. *Insert all proper disclaimers here*
1. Husband

******I just want to say that in most cases, I hate OCs. I think that they're very hard to pull off well without simply making them a fulfillment of the writer's wishes to interact with preexisting characters, such as girls writing a fantasy fulfillment of them being romantically involved with Dean Winchester.**

******I don't want this to turn into something like that. While I would like the relationship I've created to be romantic, I want it to be unique and enjoyable. Please let me know how I'm doing. Evangeline has grown into something all her own. This story is more about her than anyone else, so if you're looking for something totally Sam and Dean, this might not be your story. However, I do approach Sam and Dean from Evangeline's point of view, and I hope it enhances some readers' view of Sam and Dean themselves. I want you to be interested! **

******Additionally, I realize that a lot of people are opposed to female OCs, and for good reason, honestly. Please withhold any judgment here until you've read it! Give it a chance! Thanks so much, and enjoy the story.**

I hold him against my chest, wishing that there was some way I could hold him closer and tighter. He's slipping away and there's nothing I can do.

He's my husband, my best friend, and somehow I think that that should be enough for me to develop a superpower that will pull him back from the edge. Just the sheer amount of pain in the knowledge that I'm losing him should be enough to save him.

It's not. This isn't a Disney movie.

This is my reality, and I would rather be in hell.

SPNSPNSPNSPNSPNSPNSPNSPN

_A week earlier_

"It's the far left one." I bite my lip and stare at the ceiling, listening. "No! You know I'm not tall enough...No, we don't have a step ladder. I don't need a step ladder. Okay, well maybe I do, but you don't. That's what I married you for, isn't it? Your height?"

I smile and cradle the phone in my shoulder, taking one last look up at the kitchen ceiling before sliding open the glass door to the backyard and sinking into one of the warm lawn chairs on our deck. I picked these chairs out myself; something I never imagined that I would do. I'm no Martha Stewart, but something small and deep inside of me is kind of proud of the choice I made. They're green cloth, striped with a lighter green, stretched across bamboo frames, and they're cushioned, and I've hit the perfect time of day for them to be really nice and warm from the sun...

"_Ev?" _my husband's voice comes through the phone and nudges against my ear, wondering if I'm still there.

"Huh?"

I can almost hear his smile.

"_You're sitting outside again, aren't you?"_

"Don't judge. It's great out here." I stretch my full 5'7'' frame out on the chair, squinting up at the sun. It has to be at least eighty degrees of perfect summer out here. I can feel the deliciousness of the heat, rising from the stained boards of the deck, pounding on my bare legs and face, warming my hair.. I wriggle out of my blouse and set it next to me, exposing my grey spaghetti strap tank top to the light.

He laughs. "_Not judging." _

The older woman next door, Helen, smiles and waves, and I return the greeting. We should have her over for dinner sometime, hear her story. Get to know her. Neighbors are a new thing, of course, but people are people, no matter where you go. Even in a neighborhood like this. I watch Helen casually as she plods through her garden, plucking a weed here, smelling a rose here.

She looks so peaceful. Happy.

Her husband's been dead for a while, I guess, so she's probably lonely.

Does she have any kids? Do they come to visit her? Is she safe?

"_I'm almost at the store. Anything we need besides light bulbs?" _

Lightbulbs? Right. Talking on phone to husband. Should respond.

"Um…."

"_Do you have a list?" _He prompts gently.

"No." I scratch at my arm and keep staring at Helen.

"_Then nothing urgent, right? Nothing we can't get tomorrow?" _

"Bananas." I say into the receiver as I watch Helen turn her garden hose on. "Bananas are urgent."

"_Okay. Anything else?"_

"Uh…."

"_Tell you what. I get home and you still need stuff, we'll go out again. Together, tonight. Okay?" _

I sigh in relief. "Okay."

This man of mine. He's too good to me. He understands to such an intimate degree what it's like up here in my head. He knows what I need, and he sees it as his job to carry that out. He doesn't take our marriage vows lightly. Neither of us do.

"I love you." I tell him.

"_I love you, too." _

I tap the End Call button and set my phone on the arm of the chair. Shifting, I curl my feet under me and drape my arm luxuriously over the back of the chair, leaning back and letting the sun soak into my skin, through to my bones.

I'm going to get burned. Not tanned; just white or red. There is no in-between with my complexion. The painful red will be worth it, though. I love being in the daylight, just because I can. I'm drawn to the light like a bug, or a cat. Inexplicably and unstoppably addicted to sunlight. And my back patio has that sunlight in abundance.

This neighborhood is perfect. We spent two months scouting it out, just to be sure of it. It started with an extended stay sort of trip to the library. After finding nothing suspicious in the neighborhood or the surrounding town for the past sixty years, we pulled our fed suits out and payed a visit to the neighborhood itself, pretending to be some uppity HOA representatives checking out our "competition". I'm still not even sure that HOA groups compete, but we pulled off the con without a hitch. Nothing suspicious there, either. Even took a walk through the neighborhood with Shelby. At that point, we didn't even know what to look for anymore. Everything was peaceful to the point of being disturbingly quiet.

Ultimately, we were and are satisfied, even though we get a lot of weird stares as the "newbies" to the block. People will eventually quit peeking through the fence, and wondering if we have any kids, or if we're going to be disruptive neighbors. That will pass, as it always does. Time will cover a multitude of sins. Or suspicions. Or something. We'll prove that we're just normal people by bringing a few people some cookies, or have people like Helen over for dinner, and then people will stop being interested in us.

And the sooner the better, because I hate getting looks from nosy people. At this moment, though, I'm not in any desperate hurry. We are content. As content as two people like us can be with the idea of safety, anyway. We still sleep with a lot of hardware under our pillows, and salt lines around the bed and in the windows and doors. But we're content. We'll be okay.

Despite my hatred of snooping looks, I'm brave enough to be lying here for all to see in the middle of a Monday afternoon, the sun spotlighting my scars and the fact that I'm actually not at work like most people would/should be this time of day. Well, I don't know, maybe new mothers stay at home. But I am not, and if my prayers go anywhere, will never be, a new mother. Or an old mother, for that matter.  
"Just, no, okay?" I whisper to the sky. "No kids."

Maybe someone's listening.

I doubt it.

My stomach is flipping nervously at the sudden spin my thoughts have taken, so I get up and go into the house, pour myself a gin and tonic, and sit on the kitchen floor to stare at the broken light fixture some more.

Yes, I'm having a hard time adjusting to this life. My biggest problem today was the lightbulb in my kitchen going out, and not being tall enough to reach the fixture to change the bulb. That was my biggest problem. The burned out fixture in the stainless steel cup wasn't going to attack me, or threaten me, it wasn't going to _do_ anything. I don't have to be brave about it. Don't have to hold back don't have to lie about what we're doing, or pack our bags and trek across the country.

I just have to call my husband and send him to Walmart.

My husband. That's the other thing. How did I land him?

How did I even end up with a husband in the first place?

Like most hunters, I have never considered myself the marrying kind. It's too much of a liability, too much of a weakness for the enemy to rake you in with. To hurt you with.

Here I am, though, living the American dream with a man and a dog and a mortgage. Okay, no mortgage. But that part's a little complicated.

I'm even learning how to cook. Sort of. It's weird, having the time and money to eat more than fast food and microwave dinners. I'm a far stretch from being a _good_ cook; I know that by the look on the face across the dinner table from me every night. He's a trooper, and hopefully his suffering will be worth something in the end. Maybe I'll take cooking lessons so that I can cook something worth eating someday.

If I suddenly wake in pain, moments away from death, and find myself staring a djinn in the face, I won't be surprised. This life is, honestly, too good. How else could I have escaped the life and settled down? In a neighborhood with an _HOA _for that matter? I used to make fun of people with HOAs.

And I don't know if I would have chosen the man who bought the ring that sparkles on my left hand. I love him, but he's not my type. I don't think I would have chosen him, but maybe the djinn programmed me to be married to him because I knew him. He was convenient.

"He" is home. I stay seated on the floor, clutching my glass in my hand, as he closes the garage door, turns off the engine, and comes inside.

I almost can't wait as his footsteps come around the corning, padding softly on the carpet and then clicking and thumping when he reaches the tiled kitchen floor. His footsteps are still quiet, due to years of practice, but a man his size can only be so quiet. Absolute silence would be impossible.

"Well, hi." He peers over the bar, grinning as he sets his plastic bags down. "What are you doing on the floor?"

In response, I pat the floor next to me.

"You're only thirty-two." I say as his butt finally hits the floor next to mine.

"What?"

"You're only thirty-two." I repeat. "You're too young for your joints to creak when you sit down.  
"Shut up." he says, his face twisting into a mock expression of indignation. "You hurt my feelings. I'm not old."

"Oh, I'm sorry I hurt your feelings." I get onto my knees and crawl slowly towards him. "I guess I owe you an apology." I croon, swaying my hips and puckering my lips. "How ever will I make it up to you?"

He stares at me, just nodding slowly as I slide up to him, leaning on his shoulder and and moving my face up to his, getting ready to kiss him as I let the straps of my tank top slip off my shoulder. Just as I move in, he loses it.

His snorted laughter makes me raise my eyes to his.

"What?"

"You look ridiculous." he gasps. He imitates my facial expression, scrunching his eyes closed and sticking his lips out, making a fishy face and wiggling his shoulders.

"Shut up and kiss me." I grab his neck and pull him in to me, growling a little.

"See?" he manages between kisses. "That's more you."

He's right. Nothing about me is gentle or seductive.

He keeps laughing, pulling me to my feet as he keeps kissing me.

"I brought dinner."

_So you don't have to cook_, I add silently, smiling. I don't say it out loud.

"What'd you bring?"

"Well, to continue your theme of loving the outdoors, I thought we could grill these." He reaches into the bag and pulls out two fat steaks.

"Yes. Just, yes." I say in response.

So we sit in the setting sun, eating steak and salad and having a few beers, and just being together, and I'm convinced. This life was created for me, and for Sam, and it is not real.


	2. Elephant

"Elephant."

"Coffee cup."

"Umm...horse."

"Flower."

"Rabbit."

"Top hat."

"Maybe the rabbit goes in the top hat?"

"What is this, a circus?"  
"Well, elephant...horse…"

"Yeah but where does the coffee cup fit in?"

"You're kidding, right?"

"What?"

I roll over on my side and smirk at Sam. "Coffee fits into _any _situation."

"This is true." Sam agrees. Shelby pads out across the lawn to us, and Sam ropes her in under his arm, patting her head as he speaks. "But what if it isn't a coffee cup? What if it's a tea cup?"

I shake my head and point at the cup in question. "Tea cups are more...delicate. And swirly. It's clearly a coffee cup. See how thick the handle is? And besides, coffee beats tea any day. Tea only goes with colds, or wracked nerves, or British people. Never with anything happy."

He shouts in laughter.. "British people? Are you saying they should be thrown in with sad things like colds and panic attacks? What are you saying about that beautiful group of people?"

"Haven't you ever thought that they were kind of stiff and grumpy?"  
"But Doctor Who…" he begins.

"...isn't real." I finish authoritatively.

He gasps in mock horror. "How dare you."

I grin. "Hey, someone had to break the truth to you someday. Why not me, why not today."

He crosses his arms. "I feel like a little kid who just had their belief in Santa crushed."  
"You're too large to still be a child, Sam. Hate to break it to you."

"Hey!"

"Hey yourself." I lean over and peck his cheek. Shelby gives him another, wetter kiss on the other cheek.

I roll onto my back again, listening to the grass fold and bend under my weight and the blanket. The sun is almost gone, but a few of the clouds are still colored purple and pink. Lazily, they roll across the sky as Sam and I identify their shapes.

"I used to do this all the time when I was a kid." I murmur, tracing the outline of a thin, oblong cloud with my fingertip.

He just hums softly in acknowledgement. I shake my head and drop my arm back to my chest, angry at myself that I've blabbed some completely useless information to him. He doesn't have any reason to care about my childhood. What are we doing looking at clouds anyway? I draw in a deep breath and hold it, forcing my hands not to shake. I can do this. It's alright. I'm just having a cheesy moment with my husband, and there is nothing wrong with that.

So why can't I relax?

I look over at him, and it's nothing like I used to see in cartoons. My eyes don't turn into little hearts at the thought of him, and I don't see past all of his imperfections. I see the spot on the side of his face that drives me nuts, and he's twitching uncomfortably like he always does when he's halfway asleep, and that drives me crazy as well. His hair's pretty amazing, though.

I don't even need him. And he doesn't need me. We would really be better off on our own, I think, but we literally fell in love. We didn't intentionally create this relationship.

The first time we realized what was going on between us, it wasn't in private. We'd been on the road for six hours or more, headed for a job with a poltergeist in southern Montana, Sam and I crammed into the backseat of the Impala, Dean driving, and Cas riding shotgun, trying in vain to learn how to read a map. Dean had had one hand on the wheel, and was pointing at the map with the other, his words holding increasing levels of irritation as the conversation continued.

"Dean…" Sam had interjected.

In response, Dean simply groaned.

Sam addressed Cas. "You have to know the difference between north and south, east and west first."

I nodded absentmindedly in agreement, focused on counting the herd of antelope we were passing.

Cas, being the intuitive, socially graceful creature that he is(sarcasm hand), had turned around in his seat to answer, or ask a question, or I don't know what, and stopped with his mouth hanging open.

"Sam, do you realize that you're holding Evangeline's hand?"  
I lost count of the antelope. I didn't have to look to know. I could feel his warm fingers interlaced with mine.

It just happened, I guess. I don't know how long we'd been sitting like that, but it felt normal.

Sam nodded at Cas, then glanced at me, smiling a little. "Yeah, I guess we are."

So, we fell into love, and despite it's multitude of imperfections, it's perfect.

The sensation of perfection collides directly with the fact that we're hunters, and we haven't ever had anything this wonderful in our entire lives.

Maybe we hadn't noticed that we were falling in love because of our expectations for what love was supposed to be like. I think that was true for me, anyway. I thought love was like a rollercoaster ride, or a vacation, or a warm gooey feeling inside. Flowers and other such cheesy things. Cartoons and Disney movies and Hallmark cards.

It wasn't. Not for us. Falling in love _hurt_ like hell. It meant tearing down some of the walls we'd built up around our hearts to protect them. It meant realizing that we had one more thing that we could very possibly, and would probably, lose. It meant learning how to handle distractions from our jobs.

Sam sighs, closing his eyes, unaware of the tumultuous rollercoaster my thoughts are riding.

"Hey, mister." I smack his arm lightly. "No sleeping."

"I'm not sleeping. I'm just resting. There's a difference." he protests softly, not opening his eyes.

"How was work today?"

A smile tickles the corners of his mouth. "It was great."

"Come on, details."

"I plant flowers and dig up weeds all day. It's not exactly action packed."

"Well, isn't that why you have the job in the first place? Distinct lack of action?"

There's a brief moment of silence in which I realize exactly how far over the line I've stepped. I'm opening my mouth to fix what I've done, but he's talking again like I didn't say anything.

"Paul's letting me do some of the good stuff; there's one project that he's given me the reigns to...I'm gonna be head landscaper, design the plot and everything. It's going to pay a little more than what I usually get."

I swallow back the bile that has come up with my attempt at an apology that he cut off.

"Congratulations!" I pour as much excitement into the exclamation as possible. "Sam, that's great." And I really mean it, I really do. I just have to get over the hump I've created in the conversation. "What are you going to do? Any ideas for it yet?"

"Well, the customer wants something that really enhances the stone path that wraps through the garden, and it's a pretty big garden, so I could do a lot of different things with it…" He talks faster and faster as he goes, picking up momentum. I hear something about orchids, and bushes of some sort. I think. He's so smart. So much smarter than I'll ever be. Maybe that's part of the reason I fell for him. I don't think he even realizes that normal people don't memorize the filing system of the Library of Congress. Normal people aren't, essentially, walking Google search engines. I have yet to encounter him with a topic that he wasn't at least familiar with.

And I can barely remember what I had for lunch yesterday.

I sit up and get myself situated, resting my head on his chest and spreading my body out. My legs stretch beyond the edge of the blanket, and I hiss as the cold grass licks at the skin on the back of my calves. Quickly, I pull them back in, folding my legs onto the blanket.

Sam pauses in the middle of a sentence about this one kind of tool he's been using, and just stares at me.

"Cold." I explain.

He nods, wrapping his arms around me. I kiss his hands and keep staring at the sky.

"What did you do today?" he asks.

"You weren't done talking about your day yet."

"Eh, yes I was."

I bite my lips together and close my eyes.

"Ev," he nudges me with his elbow. "What did you do?"

It's not a belittling tone; he's been in enough of the same situation to know exactly how to talk to me.

I bring my eyebrows as close together as I can as I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to force my memories into a compact space where they'll make sense.

"I had breakfast with you." I say slowly.

"Yeah, I know that part." I hear the smile in his voice. "I was there."

"Shut up! You're throwing me off…"

"Sorry."

"Okay so after you left for work, I…" I grin, turning around and balancing myself on his chest with my elbows. "You're gonna be so proud of me. Taxes?"

"Yeah?"

"Done."

We high-five, and I continue.

"Mowed the lawn."

"Which is my job."

"No, it's not. Don't be racist. No! Not racist. Wrong word...not-feminist...what's the word?"

"Misogynist?" he laughs.

"Yeah, that."

"I wasn't! I'm a landscaper! Mowing lawns is what I do."

"Landscaper in _training_!" I remind him. "I can mow a lawn just as well as you can."

He puts his hands up in defeat. "We're not getting anywhere fast this way. Rapid fire, finish up telling me what you did today."  
"Okay." I clear my throat and put my hands out in front of me, ticking things off on my fingers as I go. "Lunch: strawberry salad."

"Nice."

"Don't interrupt. Strawberry salad. Walked Shelby. Got the mail. Threw most of the mail away. Fed Shelby. Took a shower. Called the hospital to confirm the appointment. Wrote in the journal. Went to make a smoothie. Realized the light bulb was broken. And you know the rest."

I sigh happily. "The end."

"Bravo." he says, grinning.

"Shut up."

We just lay there, staring at the sky until the color has been bleached from the clouds, and the last drops of daylight have scuttled away, replaced with darkness.

I have a superpower. A superpower that I absolutely hate. I can feel darkness.

Not just evil darkness, but physical darkness. It weighs on me as if the elephant-shaped cloud was sitting on my chest. Only, it's less like the weight of a cloud and more like the weight of the animal it resembles.

"Let's go in." I whisper past the weight on top of me.

Somehow, I manage to push it partially off and get to my feet. Sam rises without question, scooping up the blanket and following me into the house, Shelby following close behind.

We go through the sacred American routine of locking up the house for the night, switching off lights and securing all the locks, with our own added flair of ensuring the solidity of the salt line and making sure the jar of holy water under the bed hasn't tipped over.

That's what we'd do on a normal night, anyway.

As I brush into the bedroom, Sam close behind me, I discover that tonight is not, in fact, a normal night.

"Sam…" the word escapes my mouth, as it so often has, as a breathless exclamation of surprise.

He slips past me and encompasses the room with his arm. "Surprise." he says hesitantly.

"When did you have time to do this? When did you do this?" I wade through the heaps of rose petals, and somehow find the bed under them. I sit gingerly on it, trying to keep the flowers intact as I take in my surroundings.

"Too cliche?" he asks anxiously.

Rose petals, wine, candlelight, soft music from the iHome in the corner.

"This is probably the most cliche thing I've ever seen." I tell him.

"I knew it. Crap, Ev, I'm sorry. This was ridiculous…"  
"Shut up!" I catch him by the hands and pull him down onto the bed with me. "Think about it. How many times in our lives have we been allowed a chance at cliche? We have every right to enjoy this. I love it."

He shuts his mouth, pausing to consider my words. His champagne colored eyes drive themselves all the way through me, as he tries to decide if…

"I'm serious." I promise. "Sam, I love it. I've allowed myself to daydream very few times in my life, but this is one thing I daydreamed about, honestly." Not exactly true, but not really a lie, either. "It's perfect." I hand him a glass of wine and take my own.

He smiles broadly and sits down next to me, raising his glass.

"I love you." I toast him, sipping the wine and cushioning my next question with a moment of silence. "What's the occasion?"

"Anniversary."

"Of what?" I wonder.

"The day we met? Three years ago?"

It's come to this, that my mind won't even hang on to important memories like this one. I bite the inside of my lip. This is what the journal is for.

His expression is so near to being hurt that I made a quick decision to feign memory.

"Oh, yeah! Honey, I knew that."

"You only call me 'honey' when you're lying." he says quietly.

"Oh. Sorry." I drop my head into my hands. "I don't remember. Didn't."

He wraps his arm around me and kisses the top of my head. "It's alright. We can remember now."

I'm not gonna be shy about it. Sam and I fall short in a lot of areas. But we really rock at making love.

That is all.

We lie in silence afterwards for what seems like an eternity, and I turn on the iPod again, filling the room with soft music. Brian Buckley Band. The best. I hum softly to it, trying not to let the words hit me as hard as they usually do.

_Don't you marvel at the mountains, to question the good Lord "Why?"..._

"Sam?"

He groans softly, the discomfort of being extracted from sleep into consciousness etched in his voice.

"Sorry." I wince. "I thought you were awake."

"It's okay. What is it?" His eyes slowly open, exploding into mine.

The question is too broad to answer. What is it, really? What's going on in this screwed up head?

I press myself up against him, holding onto his arm as tight as I can. Somehow, my fingernails get involved, and I dig them into his skin.

"Woah...ow, Ev! What?" he sits up, his face drawn with worry.

I breathe deeply until I've calmed down, and he doesn't let go the entire time. "I'm sorry, I didn't want to hurt you." I whimper, wiping at the red marks that my nails made on his arm.

"Hey, it's okay. It's okay." he holds my head to his chest, stroking my hair. "I'm alright. Talk to me, babe."

"It's nothing."

"Ev…"

"Sam, just go back to sleep, okay?"

He knows it's _not _nothing, and so do I, but he's smart enough to not push me. He keeps holding me, but he doesn't go back to sleep.

"Brian Buckley?" he says after a moment, ear turned towards the speakers.

"Mmhmm."

"Did you get the new album yet?"

"No." I sigh.  
"Let's do it."  
He gets up and taps the screen on the iPod a few times, entering his password and completing the purchase. "Got it. Want to listen?"

The new music trickles into the room, and I feel calmer as I continue to listen. Song after song goes by, each more diverse and beautiful than the last.

"This one. This is my favorite." I whisper as yet another song begins.

He nods in agreement, his hand still on my head.

"Sam?"

"Oh, you're going to talk now." he chuckles. "You okay? What was that about?"

"Sam, do you ever wonder if this is a dream? A djinn curse?"

"What, our lives? Our marriage?"

"Yeah."

His hand stops stroking my head, and he is still.

"No. I don't." he says flatly.

"I'm serious." I press. "I won't be offended, no matter what your answer. This is all too good to be true, isn't it?"

"Ev…" his voice catches slightly, and he doesn't continue for a while. "If this was djinn...Dean would still be alive."

I hadn't thought about that.

"Oh." tears boil up and splash against my skin. He's right. He's so right.

Dean is gone.

I curl in on myself, the pain blooming and growing behind my rib cage. I moan, grabbing my head in my hands, rocking back and forth. It hurts too much. I had been able to block it out somewhat, but I can't now.

I've had Wendigo wounds, burns, and gunshot wounds that have hurt less than this does.

The place where Dean used to be in my heart is ripped wide open, so hollow and deep that it should be fatal.

And if the memory of Dean's loss is hitting me this hard, even after the time that's passed, then Sam….

I take my hands off my head and sit up, grabbing him in my arms and holding him as his own body heaves with his own agony. He takes huge fistfulls of the rose petals in his hands, crushing them so roughly that he dyes his hands, dyes my skin, dyes the sheets. The room reeks with the flowers' perfume.

_He's gone, he's gone, he's gone…._

"Shhh…" the sound fractures and splits as it leaves my lips, rattled by my own sobs. "Shhh."

"It wasn't supposed to be like that. Anything but that." he weeps.

"I know."

"I…"

"It's okay." I promise.

"It's not!" he cries. "I...I don't want this life."

Something inside me dies at his words, like maybe he doesn't want me. I know that's not true. It's not. I know what he means.

"I don't want a life where my brother is dead."

SPNSPNSPNSPNSPNSPNSPN

The eggs are runny, again. They splash noisily as I pour them out onto a plate. Eggs shouldn't be poured.

I set the plate on the table and turn around to see my mess in the kitchen.

The kitchen is crookedly spotlighted from above, since one light bulb is still out, but maybe it's better that part of what I've done is in darkness.

Paper towels, soaked in pancake batter, egg, and bacon grease, are littered over the counter and floor, creating their own makeshift, indoor snowstorm in the middle of July. Smoke still rises lazily from where I burned pancake onto the stovetop, creating a blackened, rock hard mound that smells nothing like pancakes.

Somehow, though, we force it down, and Sam leaves for work, and I set out on the grand adventure of bringing the kitchen back to a relatively clean state.

There's something about creating tender, raised wrinkles on your fingertips, saturated with soapy water. Also, it's not blood. It's just food and dirt, so it's kind of relaxing. I would even go so far and Doctor Phil-ish to say that it's somewhat therapeutic. The digital clock on the microwave display reads 8:12.

The next time I see it, it says 10:05, and I'm sitting next to a sink full of cold, soapy water, covered in grime and suds, but feeling somehow fulfilled by the completed task. My kitchen absolutely shines.

Someone else needs to be able to enjoy this beauty with me, so I walk over to Helen's house to invite her over for dinner.


	3. Neighbor

She wants me to break it.

I have to admit, no matter how many times I see her, she stands the hair on the back of my neck on end. Every time. I cringe as I continue to study her appearance now, her image swaying in my vision as I transfer my weight from my left foot to my right, and back to my left. Despite the casual stance, I am ready to spring at any moment.

Her hair used to be dark, thick, wavy, with a distinctive Italian look to it. Luscious, I think, is the word.

Now, it's mousy brown, and shorter than Sam's; shorter by a long shot. She's lucky that this much of it has grown back, but even now, there are some bald patches around her ears and the nape of her neck. The mange-style hair style is complemented by the sharp cheek bones, jutting out of the pale skin and making the green eyes look almost wicked. Whitish-yellow scars speckle down her neck, starting at her jawline, right below the slightly inward bent cheeks, and tracing down to the neckline of her green blouse, and, as I know all too well, continue under the shirt and cover her arms and torso.

She wasn't spectacularly gorgeous to begin with, so maybe she didn't have that far to fall as some people might have.

She's ugly. A skeleton with a smattering of hair and tie-dye scars.

I turn away from her and reach under the pillow on my bed, feeling the familiar, cool grip of the butt of my gun.

I lift it, balancing the weight in my hand for a moment, and then go in towards her. She wants me to break it, and I'm going to.

"Breaking a mirror is _really_ bad luck, you know." Sam says from behind me.

I pause, gun raised, inches away from my own reflection.

He takes the gun from me and sets it on the bureau, wrapping his arms around me from behind so that we can both look at our reflections at the same time.

"I believe what you're experiencing is called 'vanity'." he says.

"You know it's not." I frown, trying to free my arm from his so that I can smooth my hair some more, but he holds me in place.

"You look good, Ev."

I examine my reflection again. She's wearing this skin-tight, form fitting green blouse that swirls around into a ribbon at the waist, and my favorite pair of blue jeans. Nothing too extravagant. Just dinner with a neighbor. She looks about as good as she can.

"Do you think I should wear a hat? To cover the…"

He lets me go as I gesture to the scrappy arrangement of hair on my head.

"Nope." he shakes his head.

"Really? It's okay?"

"So selfish conscious all of the sudden!" He teases, but I see a hint of concern in his eyes. It's more than vanity; there's damage that goes beyond what is visible on the surface.

Resigned, I give the reflection a final one-over and turn away.

"This is as good as it's gonna get." I puff.

"I think you look damn good." Sam says.

How can he say that to me?

I'm about to make another snide comment when the doorbell rings.

"No! No!" I spin away from the mirror, panic suddenly clouding my vision. "She can't be here yet! I haven't lit the candles! I don't know where the corkscrew is, how are we going to have wine if I can't find the corkscrew? And the roast won't be done for twenty more minutes…Sam, do you know where the corkscrew is?" I grab my black flats and hold them against my chest as I flee the bedroom, Sam on my heels, blabbing something about how it will be fine and I shouldn't be so worried, but I don't really hear him.

My toes crack and pop loudly as I trip in the hallway, right at the top of the stairs. My heart leaps into my throat as I plunge forward, but I use my momentum to fly down the stairs, my feet occasionally touching them. I land at the bottom roughly, but upright. I take a moment to recover, to assess the damage. One broken toenail, and a rapidly pounding heart. I'm fine. Sam pounds down the stairs in my wake, and I finally realize that he has the corkscrew in his hand.

"Let me handle the wine, Catwoman." he says. "Just answer the door."

"I can't!" I gasp wildly.

He grabs me by the the shoulders. "Okay. I'll go to the door." he presses the corkscrew into my hand. "This'll be great, okay?" He sniffs at the air. "And I don't think the roast is going to be twenty more minutes. Maybe more...now?"

If that roast is overdone, I will never forgive myself. The heat licks and pounds at my face as I fling the oven door open. Nothing's smoking yet, so I yank it out and set in on the stovetop, barely avoiding dousing myself in boiling gravy-juice-stuff.

I can hear Sam talking with Helen, probably stalling her as much as he can. Quickly, I pour the wine, close the oven door, and run my fingers over my hair one last time before walking around the corner.

"Helen! Hi!" I smile shakily.

"Oh, dearie, you look lovely!" she smiles back. She hands Sam the closed-top cardboard box in her hands and spreads her arms out, beckoning with her fingers. I reluctantly walk into her arms and pat her on the back awkwardly a few times as she squeezes the life out of me.

"What's this?" Sam asks, beginning to lift the lid.

"No!" she smacks his hand lightly, and he draws it back in surprise. "That's a surprise for later. Don't you touch it." She grins at him, and he smiles back hospitably. "Oh, it's so nice for you two to have me over. I haven't had dinner with friends in….oh, I don't know how long." she has that nice, grandma-like kind of voice. I like it.

"Our pleasure." Sam says warmly, shifting the box to his left hand and gesturing to the hallway with his right. "Come in?"

"Oh, yeah! Come in! Wine?" I add.

So we have wine, and I serve the roast, with roasted potatoes and broccoli.

I watch anxiously as Helen begins to cut her meat, but Sam gets a bite of his own portion onto his fork first. He slips it carefully into his mouth, and his eyes widen.

"Sam?" I murmur under my breath.

I've ruined it. It's inedible, and Helen is mere milliseconds from putting some of it in her mouth.

"Ev." he says slowly. "Wow. This is amazing."  
I swear he's kidding, but when he eagerly scoops another forkful into his mouth, I begin to wonder.

I shove my fork into my own meat, and then nibble at it.

It really is perfect.

"Very nice." Helen nods.

"So, Helen, how long have you lived in the area?" Sam asks.

"Oh, not long. I'm a North Carolina woman at heart. Born and raised. None of this dry-air, midwest weather. Oooh." she shudders.

"What brought you out here?"

"Wouldn't say that anything brought me out here. I just came." she sighs. "Maybe it was more what drove me out. Lost m'husband down there. Kind of didn't want to stay stuck with his memory."

"I'm so sorry." Sam and I muse together.

"Ahh, you're sweet. It's been ten years. I'm alright. This place is good for me. Got my garden, and my godsons, and Pickles." She sighs, poking at her potatoes with her fork, lost in thought.

"Your cat?"

"Nah, Pickles is my lizard."  
"You have a _lizard_?" I gasp.

She nods, holding her hands about eight inches apart from each other to show me how big he is.

"No." I gasp, horrified.

"Yup."

Sam bursts into laughter. "That's _awesome_!"

I grit my teeth. Reptiles absolutely repulse me. The cold, slimy, lifelessness of them. They're so...cold. I curl my bare feet under me to warm them, ignoring the stinging burn in my toe from the broken nail.

Didn't I have shoes at one point this evening?

And then Helen launches into an in depth lecture on the wonders of her three godsons and their less-than-perfect spouses, and her three grandkids. I forget about my food and my bare feet, finding myself getting caught up in her stories. She's had quite the life. Not a hunter, obviously, but her life as a flight stewardess took her all over the world. She speaks four languages besides English. Sam and I convince her to demonstrate as proof. German, Spanish, Mandarin, and something else that I can't remember.

She talks a lot, as if no one has listened to her in a long time. That might be true.

I listen. So does Sam. I can see him absorb every word, his big eyes moist and compassionate.

"My husband, Charlie….oooh. He was _hot_. Any man in a uniform, I think." she grins. "He was a firefighter. Forty years."

"So...he was a firefighter, and you were a flight stewardess? Did you ever get to see each other?" I ask.

"No, not really. It worked for us, though. We wrote each other letters, saw each other a couple times a month." her eyes sparkle mischievously. "So, you can imagine, when we both retired...well, ooooh. It was like we were newlyweds."

She ends her story before getting to Charles's death, and I don't have a problem with that. It's one of those things...no one wants to talk about the way they lost what they loved. They want to talk about the actual person, not their memory.

Then Sam and Helen talk about flowers, and gardens. At this point, I zone out. As I zone out, I start to sense that something is off about the air around me. I try to shrug it off, tell myself I'm imagining things, but it grows stronger and stronger.

"Ev?"

"Do you smell it, too?" I ask my husband.

He nods. "Burning rubber or plastic, or something."

I nod, wrinkling my nose. Helen presses her napkin to her face, her eyes watering.

Sam and I rise simultaneously, and cautiously approach the kitchen.

"The oven's still on." he observes, reaching forward to turn it off as he chokes back a gagging cough. We're going to suffocate in here.

"Yeah, but that can't be what's making that smell…" There's nothing on the stovetop, so I look down to the floor.

"No way…" I breathe. Or try to breathe, anyway. It's challenging. The poisonous air invades my lungs, trying to choke all the good air out of me.

I wrench the oven door open, and sure enough, there they are.

Sam is laughing so hard that he's doubled over, his hands on his knees.

Helen comes in to see all the commotion, and her eyes widen when she sees the contents of the oven.

"How…"

Sam finishes the question for her.

"Ev, how did your shoes get in the oven?"

The curled up, dripping husks that used to be my shoes are releasing the toxic fumes that we're smelling. Sam pulls a mixing bowl and a pair of grilling tongs out of the cupboard and goes for the shoes, but he's still laughing so hard that he can't get a hold of them.

I grab the tongs from him, partly humiliated by having done such a stupid thing, but also amused. As I grab the first shoe in the tong and drop it into the bowl, I try to figure out how they got there.

Once I've worked through the different things I've done this evening, it really almost makes sense. I panicked when Helen rang the doorbell, so I grabbed my shoes and ran downstairs barefoot. Thus the broken toenail. Then Sam brought up the pot roast, and in my great fear of burning it, I must have set the shoes in the oven as I pulled the meat out.

"Well, I never!" Helen is leaning on Sam, her whole body rocking in violent laughter. I join in, but none of us can laugh comfortably in the fumes for very long, so we decide to head outside, opening windows and doors and anything else that will circulate the air as we go.

Helen picks her cardboard box off of the corner table.

"If it won't kill you dear, would you go get plates? We'll need them." she directs at Sam.

I set the bowl of charred shoes on the patio, as far away from the lawn furniture as I can. My interest is peaked by the box's contents, especially since the mention of plates has convinced me that "Pickles" isn't the surprise in the box.

"Do you want to open it, Evangeline?" Helen asks as Sam emerges from the house. She gestures to the box.

"Are you sure?"

"I made it for you, love." she smiles. "It's my specialty."

I sit, cross legged, on the ground, and set the box on the patio table. Sam leans over my shoulder, just as eager as I am to discover what the surprise is.

"Oh…" It's the perfect gift to present to new neighbors, but my mind instantly goes to my husband. I can already tell from the way his hand grips my shoulder that he won't be saying anything for at least a couple of minutes. When did he become so fragile?

"Helen, thank you!" I fill in for both of us.

Sam nods wordlessly.

Helen smiles. "I've been making pies since I was a kid. It's relaxing."

I really want to sit on the patio floor to eat my pie, but somehow I don't think that's how company is done, it should be more proper than that.

As I perch on the edge of a lawn chair next to Sam, Helen cuts the pie and places the slices on the plates as Sam hands them to her.

It's cherry. The thick, crimson syrup spills from the crisp golden crust, the round cherries shining between beautifully twisted pastry strips that criss cross across the top.

It is, in short, the perfect pie in appearance.

When I convince myself to get a bite into my mouth, I discover that it tastes just as good as it looks. I moan in pleasure and hold a forkful to Sam's lips, even though he has a slice of his own.

He nods slowly as he savors it.  
"Helen, this pie is…" his voice trembles.

"It's perfect." I finish.

"It's _the_ pie." Sam whispers, regarding it in awe.

"Sam…" I smile apologetically at Helen. This is, to say the least, awkward.

"No, it is!" he protests.

"What do you mean, dear?" Helen asks, eyebrow raised.

"Just," Sam shakes his head, as if trying to sort through exactly what he's going to tell her. "this is the perfect pie. I've been looking for it for a long time."

SPNSPNSPNSPNSPNSPNSPNSPNSPNSPN

Sam is still asleep when I wake up the morning after our eventful dinner party, which is good. It's his day off today, and honestly, I need this time for myself. I can't journal with him looking over my shoulder.

I change out of my pajamas into a sweater and sweatpants. It will be unbearably hot today, but at 6am, it's still cold. I don't do cold, under any circumstances. I grab the journal and a pen off of the night table and head down to Sam's study.

It just about killed Sam that only half of the books from the bunker fit in this room. The rest of them are still over there, locked away in the darkness.

I think that no matter what happens, Sam's core identity will always be a Man of Letters.

I cross the floor past bookshelves that are ceiling-high and crammed to bursting, and flip on the lamp that sits on Sam's oak desk in the middle of the room.

I sit cross legged on the floor, and before writing, I breathe in the smell of the room. My heaven will smell like this room, if I have any say in it. The musty, thick smell of the books, mixed with the brisk scent of pine needles, and the ever-present musk of my husband himself.

The journal page stares blankly up at me, taunting me with the emptiness of it.

I close my eyes and press my forehead to it, willing the words to come. They will, they will.

They have come before, they will come again.

I had dinner with Helen and Sam last night. I cooked my shoes, but the roast was good.

Helen brought pie.

I lift my head, the blood rushing around madly as it tries to decide where it belongs.

I know what to write about today. I know that this story is one that I haven't written yet, and it's one I don't want to forget.

_July 3, 2014. _

_okay just doing this 1st part cuz sam wants me to. name: evangeline winchester. maiden name: evangeline littleton. name on marriage license and other forms of id, name i tell people: evangeline jefferson. but really my names ev._

_ok last night helen from next door came over. my pot roast was good which i guess was a miracle because the pancakes that morning sucked big time. _

_the important thing is that helen brought a pie. it was special, and sam thought it was deans perfect pie. that was the thing, dean always was looking for the perfect pie, and his entire life he never found what he considered perfect. and then last night there was this cherry pie. sam didn't say it but it was that pie. it sucked that dean didn't get it before he died._

I put the pen down, marveling at how sucky of a writer I actually am. That's it, though. That was all I needed to say. I think, that in Sam's big brain, he believes that my word count needs to be greater in order for this exercise to be truly effective, but my mind works differently than his. I don't need a lot of words. I think it works, because my brain thinks in a lot more words than what actually ends up on the paper.


End file.
